Closed Captioning is used in television programming to provide visible text (generally a transcription of speech and sounds) for the television viewer. Closed Captioning (CC) is especially helpful for the hearing impaired. CC data is provided in television programming using techniques defined by various technical standards including various versions and implementations defined in technical standards CEA-608 and CEA-708.
Unfortunately, with the emergence of three dimensional (3D) stereoscopic television (3DTV), conventional techniques do not provide the optimum mechanism for one to view captioning in the 3DTV environment since the captioning may generally appear in an inconvenient z-axis location (depth) relative to other video objects which may appear to be in front of or behind the captions.